Monday, December 15, 2014

Sporting KC Announce New PBP Announcer and Other News From Heineman Interview

Robb Heineman made an appearance on Between the Lines with Kevin Kietzman and made one big announcement and dropped news on other announcements coming. The main reason for his appearance was the announcement that Nate Bukaty will become the team's new play-by-play announcer for the club. Heineman said the move had to do with the club's commitment to being local. It also addresses Heineman's earlier comment about someone who will be here for the long term. I know that Cal Williams had high hopes for his career and while I'll definitely miss hearing him on the call, or even just having a in depth soccer talk with him in the Members' Club, I understand the move from that aspect. As long as Bukaty's play-by-play doesn't go full Brad Feldman or Shep Messing homer talk I should be able to survive the move.

In regards to the broadcast, Heineman also mentioned other work that they are trying to do. The club will keep Jake Yardrich on the broadcast team last year. After spending the past few seasons as Williams' color analyst, Yardrich moved down to be the sideline reporter in 2014. Heineman also mentioned that the club is current talking with a former player about returning to the team as well to fill out the broadcast team.

The second half of the interview moved more to on the field player movement. Heineman admitted that the moves made were motivated both by the poor finish to the season and salary cap considerations. He put the trade of Aurelien Collin firmly into the cap consideration move, explaining that with the deal Matt Besler signed during the summer, KC didn't want to put that much of the cap into just the center back position for the team.

Heineman did mention that there was some other movement that was done, including a new goalkeeper. The assumption with the goalkeeper is that it is Chilean, Luis Marin, who is linked with a move to MLS and Kansas City. Marin, from the highlights I've seen looks like he should fit in well and looks comfortable with quick distribution, which is something I think that KC could do more to exploit next season against teams. After his tweet over the weekend, Heineman also confirmed that the team would be making a formal announcement on the re-signing of Dom Dwyer. This on the surface would appear to be the biggest move that the team has made of the offseason. Not only does it keep Dwyer in KC, it also means that should he continue to do well and teams in England come after him, the price KC can command goes up because of how long the team has him locked up.

The final bit of player news that Heineman brought up was that the team was signing another forward to be Dwyer's back up. Kietzman didn't touch on it, but the fact that Heineman said that a forward was being brought in to back up Dwyer would seem to signify that Claudio Bieler's tenure with the club is going to be ending in the near future. With Dwyer signing a new contract, and how much that contract will be, having a designated player as his back up would continue to be a mistake for the club.

In the final bit of the interview, Heineman talked about the league currently and where it stands. One thing that he brought up was that the league needs to clean things up. The example he specifically brought up was the playoff system. The league has had a new playoff system almost every year that it's been in existence, and with the rumored expansion to six teams from each conference, it could very well be changing again next year.

Heineman also talked about the transparency of the league, mentioning that the league needs to explain things more to fans with regards to the league. This has been one of the big complaints from fans was the inability to follow the league as closely because of the lack of transparency in how things are done in the league.

So it seems we could be in for a busy week of information from the team.